Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/176

 into the water, and are thus able to escape pursuit The corals are so numerous that they build great islands, very much as bees construct honeycomb. Some of these coral reefs are highly colored; when seen from a boat through two or three feet of water, they look more like a flower-bed than a mass of animals. The corals are so abundant that rocky islands hundreds of miles in extent are composed of their shells and skeletons You have heard of the phosphorescent light often seen on the surface of the sea. This light is caused by millions of little animals which emit a light, and they are so numerous that it is frequently possible to read at midnight on the deck of a ship. The same little animals may be seen in the water of your bath, if taken on shipboard at night On certain parts of the coast of the Samoan Islands, where we were a few weeks ago, the Palolo worm appears in great abundance in the early morning hours of one or two days at the beginning of the third quarter of the moon, in the months of October and November. As the worm is regarded as a very great delicacy by the natives, the days of its appearance are looked upon as the red-letter days of the year. It appears just at the beginning of dawn, in countless millions, on a date which may be accurately foretold by those familiar with the moon's phases. As soon as the sun appears, the millions of worms disappear, and are not heard of again until another year There are fish that fly, as every traveler by sea can attest, and it is to avoid the bonito that the flying-fish leave the water. The bonito is able to leap fifteen feet into the air, which ability it acquired in pursuing its favorite food